{"id":549209,"date":"2026-03-27T21:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T21:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/549209\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T21:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T21:43:12","slug":"election-expert-testifies-fbis-evidence-in-fulton-county-ballot-case-doesnt-make-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/549209\/","title":{"rendered":"Election expert testifies FBI’s evidence in Fulton County ballot case ‘doesn’t make sense’"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATLANTA \u2014 A leading elections expert told a federal judge on Friday that the evidence the FBI used to justify a recent seizure of 2020 election ballots<\/a> from Fulton County, Georgia, \u201cdoesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan Macias, a former U.S. Election Assistance Commission official, testified that the list of irregularities the FBI identified didn\u2019t represent a crime and that the witnesses the government based their investigation on appeared misinformed..<\/p>\n

The witnesses the FBI cited \u201cuse contradictory terminology and it represents a misunderstanding of how elections work,\u201d Macias said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no basis in reality for most of the witness statements,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was missing information and the information that was relied on doesn\u2019t reflect reality \u2014 what actually happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The testimony came amid a hearing over custody of Fulton County\u2019s ballots and election materials, which were seized by the FBI in January during a raid on an election hub, and whether the federal government demonstrated \u201ccallous disregard\u201d for the county’s rights. Fulton County sued and demanded the materials back last month.<\/p>\n

In court on Friday, Abbe Lowell, an attorney for the county, criticized the government\u2019s witnesses and information, which were laid out in a since-unsealed sworn affidavit that is \u201cfull of inaccuracies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The affidavit, which was unsealed in February <\/a>and largely rehashes previously investigated election fraud claims, detailed that the evidence was based on interviews with conservative activists and a referral from Kurt Olsen, a Republican who tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Olsen was appointed by President Donald Trump to investigate the 2020 election from within his administration.<\/p>\n

Lowell argued the government\u2019s list of witnesses couldn\u2019t be trusted because, in part, it includes \u201csomeone who was sanctioned twice by the courts for lying about elections,\u201d referring to Olsen.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s hearing is the first time the FBI\u2019s investigation into 2020 election fraud has been brought into open court. Trump, who has spent years falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him, has championed the seizure.<\/p>\n

Defending the government, Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general of the criminal division of the Justice Department, told the judge that Macias’ testimony is “woefully inadequate.” <\/p>\n

In closing arguments, Duva said the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit, Hugh Raymond Evans, did the best he could. Including the contradictory information \u2014 which Macias spoke about in his testimony \u2014 indicates he was engaging in an honest back and forth with the magistrate who signed off on the warrant. <\/p>\n

Evans is a \u201cconscientious agent who may have missed a thing or two,” Duva said, but the judge\u2019s job is not to assign a grade. Rather, he said, it\u2019s to determine whether the agent demonstrated callous disregard for the rights of the county.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s an indictment \u2014 that remains to be seen,\u201d Duva said. \u201cAll that can be judged now is the record we have now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowell argued there was no evidence of a crime in the affidavit, because there was no proof of intentional wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only element that turns normal election irregularities into crime is intent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To rebut Fulton County’s arguments that they needed the records back, the government’s lawyer played bodycam footage of Fulton County Election Director Nadine Williams telling a federal agent that they \u201ccan make paper airplanes\u201d with the records for all she cared. <\/p>\n

Georgia emerged as a major of focus for Trump after the state played a key role in Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 election victory. There were at least nine legal challenges by Trump and his allies involving Georgia over allegations of irregularities and other voting issues. They were all either dropped or denied or dismissed by judges.<\/p>\n

Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger<\/a>, a Republican, in a phone call to \u201cfind 11,780 votes\u201d \u2014 roughly Biden\u2019s margin of victory in the state.<\/p>\n

Outside of Georgia, the FBI has also subpoenaed records<\/a> related to a controversial audit into the 2020 election in Arizona, another key battleground state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA \u2014 A leading elections expert told a federal judge on Friday that the evidence the FBI used…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-549209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}